Member Info for HarChris

Stripping out YG and the integration of YG we are talking £30m cash loss at most over a company years, loss that is being chalked up as ‘restructuring’. Loads of companies raise say £30m, burn through it without much to show for it and then find themselves struggling to survive. Novacyt are in the envious position of being able to mess up a number of times and still be pretty amazingly well placed to make a success of the business.

Will the the acquisition of YG, will the integration into the wider group / de facto merger pay off? Will the board with its new members on board learn from previous mistakes and make strides forward from now? That’s the unknown but those of us here like the odds, we’d prefer to be here vs a £30m mcap company with talented management but needing to pull off miracles on a shoestring budget.

For me that’s a very healthy ris

I think I’ve muddled you up with another poster who will gloss over any fact if it gives them the opportunity to stick the knife in - you appear to be more reasonable and open to debate so I apologise for that previous statement.

As with everything you share on here it's always incorrect or exaggerated in a negative light.

'Over £500k' is actually £243k paid to directors and £265k paid to management. Management consists of a fairly large number of employees below the 'executive' management level.

£243k across the directors for six months is not extreme in the slightest. In fact take home pay has been far below the level you'd expect for similar sized AIM companies over the past few years... instead the directors took on tons of warrants, warrants that haven't been exercised due to poor share price performance.

So no the Poddars are in no way sheltered from poor performance, the opposite is in fact true. With such a large holding, with past pay in warrants that aren't being exercised and now being paid, it seems, entirely in shares for the next six to twelve months they won't see any return whatsoever unless they turn this ship around.

Neither do I live in denial or am I unable to face facts. I don't think the company is worth hundreds of millions and have not claimed so, instead I think that having spent a lot of money trying to adapt to this new situation post covid it would now be reasonable to be valued at the net cash position plus about £30m extra for a debt-free Yourgene, i.e I think there's value to be had here especially as someone who is happy taking the risk on a positive outcome re the dispute.

You've called 10p for over a year now which is £7m mcap. The company could dissolve themselves tomorrow and distribute many times that to shareholders... so it's you that's living in denial over valuation.

And if you're referring to my com

The lack of concrete news since the highly positive Investor Meet in September really is very disappointing and more than explains the sell off since.

Sorry that was meant to say, more clearly, that if we hadn't received the cash from Vanchem then that should have been stated/explained in one of the recent RNS' - the fact that it hasn't been mentioned is enough to imply we have received those funds as expected in December.

Whilst we can't be 100% it's fair to assume the extra $13.2m has been received based on all the information we have been given, especially given this situation now with SPR. It would be misleading for investors to be unsure where they stood in regards to the sale of Vanchem.

There's no way the cash burn including a period of significant maintenance and repairs (Vanchem 2024 kiln reline programme brought forward for example) is $1m a month from 1st October.

This will now have more than a short term downward effect on the share price and material effect on the business even if SPR pay the rest of the money by the end of Feb, as (i) mgmt have had to reveal just how tight the finances are despite having received around $25m from SPR already (inc the 50% sale of Vanchem) and (ii) we are evidently going to see a production downgrade for the year compared with the early guidance we received on the 29th November.

We also need V to play ball on top of everything else going smoothly but it is already looking like the bounce off the bottom has lost momentum with prices slipping back and US at 4 year lows. Given that and the perilous position BMN find themselves in it's hard to see any new lender coming in to cover SPR unless on really painful terms for holders.

Best case scenario here is just about okay but the overall picture is pretty bleak.

Kenny, instead of comparing quarter on quarter why not compare year on year for a truer reflection?

Serabi started the year with $7.2m cash and $7m debt and finished the year with $11.6m cash and $6.6m debt. During the year extensive drilling was done and the at least €630k was spent on the Ore sorter yet net cash still increased almost $5m - very solid.

Now for 2024 we're looking at between 5000 and 8000 ounce production increase, so $10m to $16m increase in revenue at $2000/oz, much of which will go straight to the bottom line.

And then we're at 2025 when we will likely be looking at 60000+ ounces that's been funded internally from cash resources. Still think Serabi would be trading anywhere close to $36m against a healthy gold backdrop?

Well we know they haven't achieved what they set out to twelve months ago but despite that they've still burnt through very little cash over the twelve months. If they can stabilise production at 1500Tpm and get much closer to the Mad capacity of 3000Tpm then they are going to be able to benefit immediately on the other side of this commodity downturn from the cash they'll be generating, unlike the explorers that will only benefit in terms of improved access to capital.

Still very well placed if all the issues this year prove to be mere early stage teething problems

Like I said it's about solidifying a new base... if Argo sp settles at 17.5p against $42k BTC then $45k BTC takes the sp to the placing price and beyond.

Later this week perhaps.

A push to $45k BTC early next week with the momentum maintained and Argo should be back at the 20p placing price.

Let's see how the other graphite companies that I track are doing to see if TGR is uniquely failing or if this is sector-wide, starting with the producers and then those still pre production.

Syrah - hit three years low earlier this week

Northern Graphite - at three year lows

NextSource - at three year lows

Talga - at three year lows

Nouveau Monde - 10% bounce off three year lows reached in October.

Groc - all time lows reached this week

Bres - 33% above three year lows thanks to the US Gov DFC grant.

You get the gist.

I agree but I just dislike this angle that some are using, suggesting that the lack of director purchases are a sign of management having no confidence in the future of the company, when there's a reasonable case to be made for why this could well be a closed period. It seems a cheap angle of attack to me.

Well the share price is also largely related to broader small cap market sentiment, it's never been so low. Almost every company on AIM, probably 95%, are down year on year and many will also be at all time lows.

When the full year results are out we are likely to see a record profit posted for 2023, on almost all metrics they will look as strong as they did in 2021 when the share price was over 5p but that's not enough in the climate. With liquidity and sentiment so low there needs to be significant progress seen, there needs to be considerable cash being generated, all targets being achieved etc.

The company isn't actually in bad shape but management have missed the opportunity to be truly thriving right now and that's what's being punished in these difficult times for small caps.

For this to be an open period now and have nobody buy, including the new directors from YG, it would have to mean that all the directors believed themselves to be unable to make a success of the company from this position, from a £33m mcap with YG as part of the group and £44.1m in cash.

We might think them incompetent but I don't believe for a second they themselves are all self-aware enough to agree with that conclusion too. And we know the likes of LR will have received well over half a million in cash following the acquisition so I don't believe for a second he would be unwilling to throw say 5 to 10 percent of that into his latest venture, one in which he'll be itching to climb to the top of.

So yes whether it's officially a closed period or not (it's often a grey area with these sorts of situations) I think they'll all be told to hold off until the dispute is resolved one way or another in the months to come.

The long term holders here are understandably pis*ed off and are focusing on whether they are going to see a positive return with their high averages t but for everyone else the question is whether to buy, add, hold, or sell at 1.35p a share/£7.2m mcap.

It would take very little to see a meaningful share price recovery here, all we really need is for the palm oil performance to match last year's as that side of the business is already generating cash + it's looking like sales price will be higher this year too. And secondly to finally get the cashew business properly up and running. No fireworks needed from the cashews if the palm side performs well, we just need to see an improvement to boost sentiment as much as anything else.

We're talking very minimal operational improvements with the backdrop as favourable as it is for profits to start flooding in and a sharp rerate to happen from such a lowly valuation, from this all time low. Does that mean reaching the brokers target of 8p? No not necessarily but that's not a reason to hold off buying at 1.3p.

Ps great post GLTader, very informative.

I am firmly of the opinion that we are in a closed period. Most of us think there's going to be a settlement over the coming months which would mean almost certainly talks progressing at this point. With it being so very critical to the future of the company one way or the other it would be highly surprising if directors felt comfortable buying with that sort of insider knowledge.

If Lynn Rees bought £250k worth of Yourgene shares at a valuation of about £10m mcap that included all their debt then i'm confident he'd be buying shares in the combined novacyt-yourgene group that has over 10x the cash YG had and no debt at just £33m mcap.

So if no director deals are forthcoming that to me simply tells us that they can't rather than they don't want to.

DKL found themselves in a mess in 2023, too heavily indebted at a time when any heavily geared company was being sold off due to rising i.rates and with very little cash.

Palm oil performance rescued them from what could have been a disaster (a forced emergency raise would have been extremely ugly and probably sub 1p) but continual cashew failures have knocked confidence and will have dented what should be a very healthy balance sheet now.

We need to see more of the same from the palm oil business through 2024 and the cashew issues must be resolved. So far int. palm oil prices are very favourable (gone through 4000MYR as we speak) and the effects of El Niño are expecting later this year so the foundations are in place for a very profitable year.

I don’t think investors will return though until it is seen in black and white, so looking at a few more months most likely without much SP recovery.